Jordan's Critque on Cuisine

Jan 11
Breakfast- Again the same as before, but as long as it taste good monotony is ok with me. One pleasant surprise today was that the custard dumplings were back. I had three.
Meal rating
Food: 5
Service: 5
Overall: Gotta love those dumplings

I will take a break from food for right now and enlighten you on the happenings of the day, since I was the only one of my family who was there at that point. After breakfast our group met downstairs and loaded onto the bus to go to Church. Since we came in late I stood in the back also allowing me to take some pictures. One man in the group is from the church that produced Facing the Giants and Fireproof, so he spoke a little in the service and then left to go speak in others. It was an awesome experience to be in that church, you could tell they were anxious to hear the message just by the way they sat forward in their seats. I was able to step out for a couple of minutes and go watch Pastor Jon Davis, who we had lunch with a few days earlier, preach through translator to Chinese. After that we went to the jade factory and let the women shop, and the men buy, for a while. After the jade place we loaded up and went to the Friendship Store where we had lunch.



Lunch- At lunch time they took us all into a back room away from other customers (my reputation precedes me) and soon about twelve to fourteen different dishes appeared in the space of about two minutes. I started out with my normal steamed rice and then went on to pile up mounds of tofu(eeeccchhh), peking duck ( merely slices of meat and nothing for us adventurous types), lemon something, a chicken stir fry, fried chicken, a beef dish with veggies which you put into rice tortillas, some kind of sweet cucumbers, and all washed down with a little goblet of white lightning Saki. Was just really warm as it went down. Unfortunetly there was no real stand out good cuisine, in fact as far service went they merely set the dishes down and were gone, I even had to bring my own water.
Meal rating
Food: 5
Service: 3
Overall: A sadly disappointing stop


After lunch we headed over to the Great Wall to commence our climbing. A not so great leader named Mao once said “He who doesn’t reach the Great Wall isn’t a true man”, well I was living proof that that is wrong. But just to make sure I decided I might as well climb. Climbing with me was my friend, Hoa, who was climbing for the second time. We went up pretty fast and were joined by another guy from our group who came all the way to the top with us. That’s right, I went all the way up, and not only do I have pictures to prove it but my signature also joined the hundreds of others on the security camera station. On the way down I slid down the rail taking about seven steps at a time. I felt good until we got to the restaurant and found that the small flight of eight stairs, they just about killed me.

Dinner- After a long day and tiresome walking I made sure my plate was piled high. It consisted of duck, sweet and sour chicken, a mushroom and broccoli dish, a plate of scrambled eggs oddly enough, slices of beef, egg flower soup, and lemon duck. The best part was these little rolls that you dipped in icing, this is the closest thing that I have had to dessert in China.
Meal rating
Food: 7
Service: 6
Overall: Tasted good after the Wall but could have used more spice